Promoting a personal brand or creator profile on Outbidly
Every other category on Outbidly is a product with a URL. People is the one category where the listing can just as easily be you — an @handle rather than a link — and that changes what's actually worth optimizing before you pay.
Two different ways to submit — and they behave differently
A People listing can be submitted either way, and it's worth knowing what each one actually does:
- An @handle (your X/Twitter handle) is treated as its own identity, separate from any URL — Outbidly just shows the handle as-is. There's no title, description, or favicon to scrape, because there's no page being fetched at all.
- A URL — a portfolio site, a Substack, a link-in-bio page — gets scraped exactly like a product listing: title, description, and favicon pulled from the page automatically.
These aren't interchangeable representations of "the same listing" — an @handle submission and a URL submission for the same person normalize to different keys, so they'd show up as two separate listings on the board, each with its own independent total. Pick one and be consistent about which one you (and anyone topping you up) resubmit going forward, or you'll end up splitting your own visibility across two rows instead of building one.
If you submit a handle: there's nothing to scrape, so the handle does all the work
With no title or description pulled from anywhere, your handle itself is the entire first impression on the board — there's no tagline to write, no favicon to set, nothing else to optimize. That means the decision that actually matters is simpler than for a product listing: is this the handle people already recognize you by, or the one you're trying to get them to switch to? A listing under a lesser-known handle gets the same rank for the same money, but it doesn't do the same job of connecting a stranger's click back to a person they might already follow elsewhere.
If you submit a URL: it works like any product listing, so treat it that way
A personal site or portfolio submitted as a URL gets the exact same scraping treatment as a SaaS landing page — set a real og:title (your name plus what you're known for, not just a bare name), write a one-line og:description that says what you actually do rather than a vague personal-brand slogan, and make sure the page has a favicon and loads without a login wall. "Newsletter on distributed systems, read by 40k engineers" tells a stranger more in one line than "writer and thinker" does.
Picking between the two
If your audience mostly knows you from X/Twitter, submit the handle — it's the identity people already recognize. If you're trying to drive traffic to a specific site (a newsletter, a portfolio, a booking page), submit that URL instead so the click lands where you actually want it to.Pricing and timing are identical to every other category
$5 claims a new listing's starting total, whether it's a handle or a URL. Topping up an existing listing only ever costs the difference to your new target, minimum $1 — the mechanic doesn't distinguish between a product and a person. If you're timing a push around a launch, a post going viral, or a public appearance, the Today board resets daily and usually needs less to lead than a mature All-Time total.
Or read the exact mechanic on the Rules & FAQ page.